Why Whitewater Courses (Part 2): What Next? Build a Park?

Articles, Climb Safe, White Water Courses

By John Davis, President, C6K, Inc.

Remember in the first article I had just had my first whitewater experience. So, there I sat on the café terrace overlooking the whitewater park. I was reliving the thrill of that first big drop and all of the subsequent dangers that were thrown in our faces. I was exhilarated, fatigued and a bit sore, but most of all, I was bursting with self confidence. I couldn’t help thinking, what next?

OK, I can set up a few more rafting excursions at the park. Maybe I can get a bunch of people from my office, or my church, or the community center, or even a load of my pre-teen son’s friends and arrange an “outing”. I’ll bet we could form some sort of team building exercise or leadership training or motivational experience. After a few more visits I think we could try out our new skills or a real river. But I want to do more.

I noticed there was a sign about all kinds of offerings for training and education. Kayaking, whitewater canoeing, climbing and rappelling classes available. I can even get outfitted here. Hmmmm, I think it’s kayaking I want to go for first. I wonder if I could get good enough to enter one of the competitions I saw on a poster in the lobby? I wonder if the events will be televised. Hold on a minute! I don’t live in this city, I’m on a business trip. What to do, what to do?

Then it came to me! Build a whitewater park and climbing center in my city. Yeah, great idea! Whoa! Wait a minute. How in the world can I do that? I’m a software engineer for the federal government. I know how to build systems and navigate through a morass of bureaucracy, but actually engineer and create a business that truly has a value to the community….I don’t know. I mean, I’ll need to find the right engineers, a business consultant, a risk consultant, a location and, oh yeah – funding, moola, dinero. I know how to waste other people’s money but put it to good use, I’m not so sure. I’ve got to give this some thought.

Alright, it’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve coerced some solid people to join the effort. We’ve done some research at home and made use of the vast unused resources at the office. I think we’ve come up with a good start to organize our thoughts and ideas:

Where would we build this park? It seems that the best locations are where you can count on a reliable stream of customers. What are those locations? Well here’s a few ideas in order of viability:

• Urban areas or population centers are strong candidates. There are over fifty population centers in the US that would fit the bill. My metropolitan area has a population of about 4 million people who could be anywhere from 5 to 60 minutes from the park. A partnership with a municipal or county park and recreation department may be possible. A park wisely located in close proximity to commercial centers would be beneficial to ancillary businesses in the area — that is businesses that would benefit from such a course, either directly or indirectly. They would include everything from restaurants, to sporting goods stores, to hotels, to just about any business in town. And from all the kayaks and canoes I see on the tops of cars, it seems that paddling is popular here.
• Partnering with a year-round resort to build a park could be a real hit. You could share the cost of construction and operation, have the resort provide the property and take advantage of the visitor traffic. Such a unique feature would be a real boon for the resort and have a very positive impact on the number of visitors.
• Another possibility that is as viable as a resort is in a resort area. There are many areas in the US that offer year-round activities that draw visitors. I’m primarily thinking of areas that have several ski resorts but draw visitors for other activities in the warmer months. This could include New Hampshire, upstate New York, Vermont, Maine and on and on. These areas could be conducive to forming a consortium of resorts in the area to partner in the project with or without the involvement of government park and recreation entities.
• If partnering with a resort is a good idea, then how about a theme park? We guess there are things to consider like location of the park, visitor traffic, and seasonal schedule. But, it could work in much the same way as a resort.

Now, who would we get to help with the design, construction and development of operational plans? We could go to architects, construction companies, and/or hydrology engineering specialists. Our guess is that there is someone that has the knowledge and proven experience to design and build a whitewater park. Maybe we will make a call to Whitewater Parks International.

Now that we have all that out of the way, how are we paying for this? It’s time to get creative. The number one thing we don’t want to do is burden the tax payers with a construction and operations bill. We don’t want to get into debt financing or venture capital in order to keep the number of “fingers” in the pie manageable and to keep our vision “pure”. So, after some brainstorming we came up with these options:

• We can form a corporation, make shares available for F&F (friends and family) and then submit a PPM (private placement memorandum). This means we have to develop a comprehensive business model and plan to present to potential investors. We make enough shares available to finalize the initial park design and build and operate the park. Then when we are ready to open a second park we can form an LLC and solicit for investments for that park. Our exit strategy for investors – go public.
• We could form the corporation as above but establish the park as a franchise and partner with another entity who would finance the park and operate under the control of the corporation. This would work well for resorts, resort areas and theme parks.
• Although we want to stay away from using tax dollars, there is another option. We could, in the right city, county or state, determine if it is possible to float a government secured bond to build and operate a park. This would require that the park be located in an area that is extremely conducive to the success of the park. We would require that our return-on-investment or cost-of ownership be very aggressive – 4 years or less. A successful park would not rely on tax dollars, but would pay a dividend to bond holders. In other words, new revenue would go back to the city, county or state. This could also backfire on the community should the park fail, so we would need to take great care in responsibly establishing the marketing and business plans.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more ideas on how to finance, suitable locations, activities, marketing opportunities, corporate structure, risk analysis, design and so much more. But, we’re heading off to go raft a real live river with a good outfitter and we have a four hour drive ahead of us. We do have our priorities so we’ll have to get back to you later.

admin @ May 1, 2009